The
key thing may be to create vacuoles of non-communication,
circuit breakers, so we can elude control.[1]

Karlsplatz
is one of the most important and most central traffic
junctions of Vienna, at the same time a place of disparity,
complexity and a 'traffic hell'. Its surface, consisting
mainly of multi-laned roads with many islands of different
sizes in between them, denies itself to the pedestrian,
while underneath there is a typically transitory urban
space, a junction of several underground-lines, which
generate an enormous stream of working people and tourists
who traverse it every day. Clearly, conditions like
these do not constitute the urban planning ideal of
a city's administration. Since architects, town planners
and planning commissioners have not presented any moderately
priced ideas in recent years for doing away with the
diffusion and alleged ugliness[2]
of the square, the City of Vienna seems to be resorting
to art now. The social-democratic mayor of Vienna was
recently fantasising that he wants to make the 'presently
unattractive square' into "Kunstplatz Karlsplatz"
(Karlsplatz, a place for art), which is to be 'newly
organised and should invite a leisurely walk'. To this
end he plans a synergistic cooperation of those cultural
institutions which are located on or around Karlsplatz
now (Historical Museum, Künstlerhaus, Kunsthalle, Musikverein,
Technical University). In view of such concentrated
political interest there is a danger of:

1.
a policy of beautification of a place, which in addition
to all its problems needs nothing less than the embrace
of classical art activity. When elsewhere the colonisation
of a place by means of art results in proliferous gentrification,
here it may be functionalised within the frame of a
bourgeois-populist urban planning project in its old
role of beautifier in the shape of an autonomous or
pseudo-contextual object or some alternative guiding
system.

2.
the instrumentalisation of art as catalyst for a process
in which a bourgeois minority more and more swamps and
standardises[3]
the square. The production of art is hailed as a
communicative process, yet in this context it would be
more a lubricant for bourgeois entertainment, or, stated
more prosaically: for parties and gastronomy. The art
institutions would become marginally-praised side issues
of their own coffee shops, book shops or merchandising
shops.

3.
the displacement of marginal groups, who have been using
Karlsplatz as their meeting place, most of them people
identified by the authorities as drug users, alcoholics
and homeless. This implies the continuation and
completion of complementary practises of privatisation
and the commands of society control: the subterraneous
pedestrian passage underneath Karlsplatz has in recent
decades been increasingly developed andsmoothed over, and in the end the remaining area
has been rendered unusable to its former users by the
rather indecent introduction of 'high culture': to drive
the habitués away from the area, where the
subterraneous womb of Karlsplatz opens, the authorities
had speakers installed – like in the main station of
Hamburg and similar public spaces in Europe - which emit
music by Mozart. Not a particular favourite of people
who see themselves as outlaws.

The
situation might sound very specific, but it has a lot
to do with the general processes and problems of a city,
with gentrification and the privatisation of public
spaces. In the urban setting of expanding control regimes,
neither political praxis nor theory can stop at Habermas'
concept of the bourgeois public sphere as the place
for civil consensus.

The
'public sphere' as a normative term rather implies that
in each case, where yet another piece of public area
is expropriated, this expropriation is "made public".
To make public in this context means two things: one
to expose, disturb and thwart the neo-liberal strategy
of permanent expropriation, the other the creation
of public sphere[4]
specifically in places that are in danger ofexpropriation.

Strategies of Reappropriation

Of
the many strategies emanating from cultural background
and aiming at the reappropriation of public space, I
would like to describe four in the context of the urban
space Karlsplatz:

1.
The first possibility recommending itself, which was
developed extensively in the nineties, is a micro-political
artistic intervention into clearly defined spaces, i.e.
through the more radical forms of Community Arts, New
Genre Public Art, interventionist art.[5] Involved people and experts
would cooperatively develop various alternative models
for their environment. If the action is too hasty, a
widely discussed problem might occur: non-disturbance
instead of disturbance. Community Arts projects often
function as catalysts for the general withdrawal of
the welfare state because their reform orientation does
not go far enough.[6] The contrary argument could
still be raised that at least concrete results in concrete
contexts have been achieved in some of the better cases.
In 1993, for example, "WochenKlausur", a group
of interventionist artists, starting from the Secession
introduced a project for the medical care of homeless
people on Karlsplatz, which succeeded at least in setting
up depots for the remaining belongings of people living
in the street and – as its biggest success – a bus for
the medical treatment of people needing help, which
was not only stationed at Karlsplatz but also at eight
other locations.[7]

2.
Even more common than the first strategy is the classical
lobbyistic interventionist strategy: In direct communication
with the politicians in charge or – less directly –
via the most far-reaching mainstream media, intellectuals
and cultural decision makers bring to bear their symbolic
capital and become citoyen
instead of bourgeois – or else, they form a citizens' initiative. In the context
of cultural politics and urban planning this happened
as early as 1990 when an ultraconservative citizens'
initiative opposed the plan for the Viennese 'Museum
Quarter' (Wiener Museumsquartier) aided by the campaigns
of "Kronen-Zeitung"[8]
and FPÖ[9]
opinion polls. The initiative insisted that the protection
of historical monuments be a considerable criterion
in cultural policy and urban planning. Since the beginning
of 2003, possibly relating to this notorious citizens'
initiative, another group started a campaign called
'Open up Karlsplatz' for Karlsplatz to become a 'site
for open cultures'. Even though their programme sounded
like a bad advertisement for a mediocre household cleaner,
it succeeded immediately in increasing the interest
in the subject, which up till then had only been dealt
with by politicians and local government officials.
As early as the beginning of January 2003 the major
liberal newspaper "Der Standard" reported
on the Karlsplatz-initiative and the journalist Thomas
Rottenberg quoted a certain Karl Latz, said to be a
proponent of the initiative: 'the possible reorganisation
of the square poses a historical chance', the square
should not only serve in 'museum-like ways' for storing
art in the museums along the fringe of Karlsplatz. In
the same newspaper the extensive report was followed
by a commentary, in which left-wing critics of the initiative
complained about the vagueness of its concept. Slogans
and empty phrases like 'A place for open cultures paving
the way for democracy' could be taken up by all political
directions because of their indeterminacy and used for
their purposes. Soon thereafter first doubts arose as
to the authenticity of the initiative on the occasion
of an event for "Kunstplatz Karlplatz". The
same journalist who had written the first report and
interviewed Karl Latz, eventually negated his existence
in the "Standard": "The citizens' initiative
is as real as its 'founders' appearing on homepage www.verkehrshoelle.at.
None of these persons exist."

3.
If this assertion proves correct, we come to the third
strategic variation against the expropriation of public
space: The subversive praxis of the communication guerrilla[10]
is an attempt to interrupt and interfere with communication
flows by means of fakes, media sabotage and other tricks,
in order to help surface discourses, which were not
visible before. Or to shift existing discourses: a citizens'
initiative is able to unsettle or disrupt a discourse,
to make a breach, to create"empty vacuoles of non-communication"
as Deleuze calls it. At the same time this destructive
act creates the possibility to make use of the gap in
the discourse for producing critical public spheres.

4.
The most relevant current stream of "committed
urbanism" is ever more evident in the metropoles
as practices of an activist
reappropriation of the city: historically rooted inSituationist practices, particularly in France in the sixties,
the German squatter fights in the seventies and eighties,
the English "Reclaim the Streets" movement
in the nineties[11]
up to the present public disobedience of the Disobbedienti[12]
in Italy and the protests against the Schill party in
Hamburg[13].
Anti-state movements not only reject a social retrenchment
and the processes of expropriation of public spheres
as described, but offensively take possession of urban
spaces. That does not only influencechanges in political activisms against urban
control regimes, but also the art practices which intervene
in social areas – as described under item 1 – and are
in danger of non-disturbing
and boosting rather than disturbing capitalist flows
of communication. What has been missing in the art practices
of the nineties "seems to be given in a new situation:
being embedded in a larger context, being cross-connected
with social movements. Joining the heterogeneous activities
against economic globalization, the old forms of intervention
art are being transformed and new ones are emerging."[14]

In
Vienna the net-culture initiative Public Netbase is
one of the homebases for all kinds of projects from
communication guerrilla to activism. In 2000 Public
Netbase[15]
established itself as a platform for antagonistic actions
especially in the field of music and DJ culture[16]
in the context of artistic protests and demonstrations
against the government; it is also continually active
on behalf of the Karlsplatz.In June 2003 Public Netbase
organized an event called "Open Cultures"
(quite near to the slogan of the citizens' initiative)
at the Karlsplatz and at the same time participated
in a large-scale sound demo free
re:public. These politics of occupying the actual
space of the Karlsplatz are not without self interest.
Public Netbase is one of several cultural initiatives,
which wants to underpin the haphazard activities around
"Kunstplatz Karlsplatz" with the radical construction
of a critical public sphere, beyond the slogans like
'non-space' and 'traffic hell'. Beyond the phantasms
of city planners and control society, who dream of a
social clean-up and spatial transparency, beyond a cheap
instrumentalisation of art institutions for these strategies,
a place should be created which reaches far into the
world.

In
the bourgeois Museum Quarter of Vienna a symbolic battle
was fought about a reading tower, between those who
advocated a tower - 67 m high, taller than any building
around it and visible from afar - as a symbolic landmark
of the cultural quarter and the citizens' initiative
mentioned earlier, which opposed it for reasons of historical
preservation and urban planning.[18]
The fight between the belated modernists and the guardians
of cultural heritage became highly emotional and was
waged under strong media coverage. The alternative between
the reactionary prevention of new buildings and the
realisation of a reading tower as exemplary representational
architecture is basically all wrong. Where the creation
of public sphere and reappropriation of public space
are involved, the notion of representational buildings
must be criticised, be they old or new.

The
band Einstürzende Neubauten sang about "The Pit
of Babel", thereby alluding to Franz Kafka[19], the literary expert for
the building of towers and other constructions. Kafka's
concept of the tower in his novel "The Castle"
is far from the usual idea of the ivory tower which
transcends and stands high above barbaric worldliness.
On the contrary, his tower in "The Castle"
opens upward as if an inhabitant locked in the house
had "broken through the roof and risen up …, to
show himself to the world."[20]
And Kafka goes one step further in inverting this metaphor
by maintaining that progress is only possible if the
extreme station on the tower is relinquished. Kafka's
fragment "I ran away from her …"contains the remark, to which Einstürzende Neubauten allude,
"What are you building? I want to dig a pit. Progress
must be made. My station is too high. We are digging
the pit of Babel."[21]

The
notion of the pit, the inverted tower, is the juxtaposition
of the ivory tower. Against a policy of representation
in the old or the new style, this notion does not counterpose
anything visible or central, but invisible, indescribable.
Therefore the inverted tower is not a metaphor, but
the creation of something invisible, i.e. of discourse
and dissent, ofconflictual public sphere. Against the towering
supremacy of art a hole must be dug, which reaches deep
down into the world.[22]
A space where no-one can pretend to observe all global
happenings, where progress is made just by leaving one's
too elevated station, all the more connected to molar
lines and systems. And in our context the experimental
set-up for the inverted tower proves to be particularly
favourable, and the supposed metaphor turns altogether
towards the material: During the course of constructing
the underground below Karlsplatz some subterraneous
spaces became vacant, which were intended for cultural
purposes.

There
is no lack of cultural initiatives, which could imprint
on the place. This channel of discourse and its constructively
crisscrossing vocal streams could not only supply a
suitable venue for initiatives such as Public Netbase
and Depot, formerly based at the Museum Quarter, but
also - going beyond this and involving other groups
- provide a new politico-cultural focus which has been
lacking so far in Vienna. Radical discursive culture
initiatives, net culture, media art, art theory could
try their hand at overlapping art, politics and theory,
without driving away those marginal groups, who are
currently the hallmarks of Karlsplatz. The inverted
tower would not be a place for bourgeois contemplation
like the reading tower, nor a venue for spectacles,
but a place of actuality, of contemporary becoming,
a tower that is pointed into today's world.

[18]
The concept of the tower disappeared after repeated
rededication and shortening in the names of building
regulation, urban planningand preservation of historical buildings. In
this case the citizens' initiative won (cf. http://www.t0.or.at/~zursache/muqua/6.htlm),
but could not prevent the museum quarter.